IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – An Iowa jury on Wednesday acquitted a journalist who was pepper-sprayed and arrested by police while covering a protest in a case that critics have derided as an attack on press freedom and an abuse of prosecutorial discretion.
The jury found Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri not guilty on misdemeanor charges of failure to disperse and interference with official acts. It also acquitted her former boyfriend, Spenser Robnett, of the same charges after a three-day trial in Des Moines.
The verdict is an embarrassing outcome for the office of Polk County Attorney John Sarcone, which pursued the charges despite widespread condemnation from advocates for a free press and human rights.
Those advocates, ranging from Sahouri’s bosses at the Register to Amnesty International, argued that Sahouri was wrongly arrested while doing her job by covering racial injustice protests in Des Moines last May.
Prosecutors argued that Sahouri and Robnett didn’t comply with police orders to leave the chaotic scene outside of a mall and interfered with an officer who pepper-sprayed and arrested Sahouri, who was on assignment for the newspaper.